


the student revolutionary

by pyrrrhus



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: character death but like?????, past idealist!grantaire, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 02:04:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6176011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrrhus/pseuds/pyrrrhus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>i've literally been writing this vaguely past-idealist!grantaire thing for months and it;s like 5 shitty prose poems but fucking here it is fam</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the becoming

**Author's Note:**

> yikes

The spines of history books shiver when young, curious fingers brush past them in reverence, exploring the strange titles that bear words to be understood in time. _Revolution. Liberty. Freedom._

Their pages exhale dust and ideals too fine to escape, that settle in the eyes and the mind to cloud the world and tint it dangerously. The young revolutionary inhales and poisons himself with the lives and the shining moments of those who strode tall before him, who snatched the pen from the hand of the Muse to rewrite history themselves, those who sleep now in the soft pages she lays down for all her doting thieves as she eases her tool from their bloodied fingers – she does not always remember their names (they will forgive her for it). At night, he will dream of them all and ache for a place in their midst.

The dust settles on his bones, in his lungs, constrains the beat of his heart to that of a pounding war drum. And yet nothing has changed; he coughs, but the dust does not shift, and he sits back to turn the pages of the books and breathes easily. History catches a glimpse of him, and smiles, pen poised over page, curious. 


	2. the rebellion - the still room

The room is empty, and it is quiet.

And he is the last.

And he is young.

And now, he will die.

In his hand, an empty gun. The death grip around it is the same as the one he had on a microphone a day earlier; it felt as though it had been years, years since he had stood on a platform and felt the wind whip around him, the city urging him forwards, _marchons_. It felt as though it had been years since he had called the crowd “To arms!”, since he had made them _roar_ , and that roar had flowed through his blood the way that _revolution_ seemed to flow through theirs, the way it flowed through his, too.

_Had flowed_.

They had been abandoned, he knew that - he was young, but he wasn't a fool. It had been glorious, at first; they had risen up, buoyed his words and his friends up on a tide of fervour and excitement and the air had filled itself with cries and cheers and electricity had pulsed through them as they took to the streets, tumbling and shrieking, guns held high and flags held up higher, streaming in the wind as they charged on the future with the old martyrs at their backs, cheering them on, pushing them eagerly forwards. History, he had known, then, had its eyes on them.

Stock-still in the empty room, he wondered where history was looking now, and prayed that she would not avert her eyes.

Dust and thin smoke hung in the air, thickening it, cloaking the world in a weak haze as if to shield the young eyes from all that was strewn around him; someone he remembered slumped over in the corner of the room, the walls gaping around them, the body just as still as the rest of the room. Here, a smashed-up table, there, a shelf that had collapsed under gunfire. Blood on the wall that didn't match the decorations.

Where were they? Those cheering masses, whose hearts had seemed to beat the same war song as his own, who had swept him along so far as the gunfire, who had diminished overnight, who had decided, perhaps, that this wasn't for them and left them alone to face the guns alone.

_Alone_.

He will die alone, he realises.

He straightens his spine at the sound of standard-issue boots on the stairs, the last patrol sent to clear the buildings, to sweep up the tattered remains of the insurgent scum.

Perhaps if he dies looking proud, history will watch him fondly.

Perhaps if he dies with his head high, he will not be forgotten; perhaps this will mean something.

Against the barrel of the gun, his knuckles shine white, the row of uniforms filtering into the room stopping before him, watching him. _Here I am_ , he thinks. _Here you are. Make this worthwhile_.

The row of uniforms lifts a row of guns before him, rifles pointed at his chest and his heart hammers hard against his ribcage, shoulders squaring, fire burning behind his eyes as he swallows down the fear. He feels the eyes of all who have gone before him at the windows, watching eagerly and with open arms, martyrs waiting with bated breath for this new, willing addition. _Do it_.

"He is young."

No.

"He's a kid, look at him."

_Please_.

"Leave it, men."

His throat closes over as the row of guns lowers, as the uniforms turn away, their postures slackening with relief that they don't have to take aim at him, as if he hadn't brought the city to boil.

A drop of blood carves a slow path down his temple as his legs weaken beneath him, eyes burning and blurring, the eyes disappearing from the window, history turning away, and he is alone.

And now, he will stay that way.


	3. what he became

Dousing fire with wine became easier than he ever imagined.

He resigns himself to writhe in doubt and disbelief, to curl into the shadows and shy from the light, knowing what it may spark within him and living in fear of it. He learns to be cold, learns to keep himself unmoved by the whispers of revolt and the ache in his chest; those are cured with a simple, bitter dose, and he laughs in the faces of those in whom light shines still bright. _One day, they will know_.

The dawn ceases to bring with it the promise of new life and a new beginning; he falls out of love with Eos’ rosy fingers. Now, he watches them stretch across the sky and pre-emptively resents the new misery they surely bring. Rolling from tangled sheets, he turns from the window and does not admit to himself that he reaches for the smooth glass of a bottle as though an automaton; he is too accustomed to the taste of wine to notice it, anymore.

He jokes that he pours libation at the shrine of Dionysus while he longs for the cold attentions of Thanatos, who always seems to turn from him at the last moment, no matter how close they come.

With whatever he can, he drowns himself, and grows unrecognisable. The soft curls tangle, the mouth draws itself permanently into a sneer, the cheeks abandon boyish roundness and hollow, covering themselves in rough hair. The eyes grow sad, left alone, almost empty, and the skin beneath them darkens as if bruised; the shoulders hunch forwards, the posture slackens, every edge becomes brittle and coarse, there is defeat and resignation in every line.

Sometimes, he can still hear the gunfire. The shouts. The pleas for mercy. Sometimes, the smell of smoke lingers around his nostrils and brings his eyes to water. Sometimes, the room stretches around him until it becomes a gaping, empty maw to match the hollow feeling his chest has long since grown accustomed to.

It has been years since History looked away.


	4. when they find out who he was

When they find out, he is standing in the middle of a crowded room. A room full of who he used to be, bright shining ideals and fiery eyes and passionate hearts and soaring voice. They remind him, distantly, of how belief felt. He thinks that might have been why he joined them, wondering if he could feel that burn once more (he didn’t).  

For a few still moments, all faces turn towards him, shock and horror and surprise and sorrow mingling and settling on him. He does not notice; his eyes are fixed instead on the projected images that flicker across a blank wall.

His eyes are fixed on his own eyes, wide and terrified and young, as they dart around to the parade of stretchers and body bags that stream around him, to the paramedics and the blood and the oxygen masks. His eyes are fixed on the moment that he realised it would never matter, that they would be forgotten, that belief was not bulletproof. The younger version of himself that screams against the wall has blood matted into his hair and cheeks that had never known a beard.

All eyes shift between the man who sways in the middle of the room, halfway to leaving, and the boy who sways in the middle of a square, halfway into a police car and discovering what devastation feels like.

Distantly, he hears himself laugh, hears himself tell their chief to _“Turn that shit off.”_

The only response he’s granted is a soft rendition of his name, and he shakes his head, tearing his gaze from the old footage and starting out of the room; the revolutionaries part before him, the room still and silent as it realises what stands before them.

No one speaks as they stare at their would-be future, at the product of belief and failure, at the man they spent a long time laughing off; all they can do now is think _oh_.

And so they move before him, moved by him, let him stagger out into the cold with wine in hand, stay quiet when the chief follows him (in how many ways, they wonder?)

He’s had enough of still, silent rooms. 


	5. the rebellion - the second still room

In the end it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how many speeches he gave, how many fights he fought, how many times he let himself rise to his feet as the world rocked beneath them to let all that he had once despised flow freely from his tongue. It didn’t matter, in the end, what he was told he was incapable of. If he had known that, in the end, none of it would matter, perhaps he would not have spent so many years combatting fire with wine and thinning his blood, drowning out belief with bottles and laughing at the mirror. Maybe there would have no nights spent empty and emptying. Less mornings spent aching, maybe. If he had known that it wouldn’t matter, in the end, he might not have let light drain from his eyes so readily, might not have turned flesh to marble to make it a little easier to mock for all that he had lost (torn from his chest and cast aside).

“It didn’t matter” was just what he thought as he laid his head down upon the table to sleep to the sounds of schoolboy war songs and strong footsteps stalking away – he didn’t have the heart to remember that marble can burn. It didn’t matter how tenderly his gaze fell, he loud he laughed, how many times he threw an arm around a brother and quelled the fear of letting go. No matter how many creased smiles poured between them, in the end, none of it mattered. These were the things that he could not cast aside, these were his contradictions and his convictions. It didn’t matter how aching the loss, there was naught to do and it didn’t matter.

If only he had known that he would once more face rifles in a still room.

“It didn’t matter” was what he thought as he his feet tripped on the corpses of all that did. It didn’t matter – they were all beyond saving. It didn’t matter – he was always going to die at the point of some gun or another; all that differed was who held the trigger. It didn’t matter, in the end, how many sore days were spent in the harsh withdrawal from belief that he subjected himself to. It didn’t matter, in the end. Relapsing never felt so sweet as when the old words clawed out of his throat and broke their chains in the gunpowder air, as when a cold hand grasped his and warmed to flesh, with it the gentle upturn of the lips that said “It didn’t matter, I knew you would come.” It didn’t matter, in the end, how much he spurned the believer; being one, there was no other way for him to die.


End file.
